"Wouldn't marry the pres-i-dent"

The National Film Board of Canada has a Vimeo channel. Want to get lost in a land of cinematic wonder, we ask, rhetorically? It's one of the best places on the Web to spend some time being entertained and educated.

Here's a great example of what NFBC does with its money, and reader, we think that's money well spent.


Mr. Frog Went A-Courting from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

And we highly recommend Blinkety Blank by Norman MacLaren (1955).

TL;DR -- Triggers Everywhere and Mystic, Mythic Percussion

We offer two wildly different articles to read and discuss at cocktail parties. Understand that if bringing up either of these things gets you crossed of the list for future invitations to social gatherings, your friends were probably horrible people.

First comes the heavy lifting via Jenny Jarvie's thoughtful piece "Trigger Happy" from New Republic. Jarvie discusses the increasing use of "trigger warnings" not just in journalism, editorial and other writing (especially on the Web), but in casual language as well, especially on college campuses.

The Typing Monkey agrees with Jarvie that the over-use and often incorrect application of the idea of trigger warnings, is and will have the opposite intended effect.

Trigger warnings are fast becoming the new frontier of political correctness in the worst possible way. We call it the tumblrizing of pop media -- a world where, if we were to retrofit everything for trigger warnings, a sitcom such as All In the Family would come with a one because there's a blowhard racist white guy in it and he might shout at some point or use hurtful language.

***

To soften that get-off-my-lawn anger check out "Was Stonehenge a Giant XYLOPHONE?" [caps theirs] from the UK's Express. Jane Wharton's writing doesn't match the hyperbole of the headline, thankfully. The whole thing is speculation based on one detail regarding the properties of the stones used to create the prehistoric monument. But it's fun to think about.


[Dan Savage alerted us to the trigger warning article. The Fortean Times led us to the Stonehenge bit.]

Six

Tuesday Jan 21, 2014 was The Typing Monkey's sixth anniversary ... or birthday? What do you call the day that marks another year of blogging into the wind? Right. "Pointless." Very good.

[At this point in the conversation, our intern Kim was asked to clock out for the day. "Clock out? I don't even get paid," he said. Kim. Kim, c'mon. -- ed.]

To celebrate, we punish you with links culled from Arts & Letters Daily, our ongoing source of quality journalism, editorials and critical thinking that helps us remember there's more to this technology than bewbs and horror movie trailers.

"We need to talk about TED" by Benjamin Bratton
... in which a man gives a TED talk that points out everything wrong with TED talks. It's like he's saying what we're thinking.

"No, Jane Austen Was Not a Game Theorist" by William Deresiewicz 

... a call to resist and reject the post-Freakonomics/Gladwell trend in literary and art criticism to assert that modern, often trendy, scientific theories and ideas are the real themes and subtexts of many great works of art, history be damned.

"The Paratext's the Thing" by Thomas Doherty

"The irritating distractions have morphed into the main attractions."

Perhaps the thematic thread that connects these editorials is just in our imagination. But  we think they're complementary.

Monsters All the Time

Need near-daily doses of hideous horrors, creeping corpses and fantastic phantasms? [Who wrote this, Stan Lee? -- ed]

Get thee to Monster Crazy and Monster Brains.

Yeah, we talk about both blogs a lot, and link to them in the Monkey Love section. But that's because they are excellent portals to art both high and low, and all of it geared toward monsters. What are you even still doing here reading this?

Oh fine, here's a sample of one of many great things you'll see at Monster Crazy:

Now get going.

Sampling Ouroboros

The Typing Monkey un-ironically, well, and sometime fully ironically, grouses about the Web/internet all the time. But as a communication medium, it does many wonderful things.

Case in point: We listened to the song "Loose Booty" by Sly & the Family Stone this morning. Not because we're awesome, but because it was the subject of the most recent Hear This column at the AV Club.

Hear This can be a real treat when it does something like it did with the entry concerning "Loose Booty" -- that being, make the reader aware of a lesser-known song from an otherwise well-known artist. And in this case, it was in service of showing off something else that modern technology has enabled: Finding great music by sample-sourcing.

"Loose Booty" was used as the basis for The Beastie Boys' tune "Shadrach" from their sophomore album, Paul's Boutique, a real piñata of an album for sample-geeks. One read of the liner notes to that could start an expensive crate-digging habit.

We've always called that game "Spot the Sample" but the point is the same: You hear hip-hop music with samples, and you see if you can figure out what the source material for the sample is. Alternately you read the liner notes (or cheat via Who Sampled Who) and go find that music.

The result is, you pride yourself on your vast knowledge, and equally vast music collection, or you discover something new, and enjoy that new find. So shake your cane at those damn kids all you want, a portion of the hip-hop audience will always care enough to seek out the music that inspired or contributed to what they're listening to.

Which brings us to this:


If you haven't already seen this, or haven't already pressed play, it's a terrific and infectiously fun breakdown of another Paul's Boutique cut, "Shake Your Rump." One song, many samples, all of them neatly pointed out for you by a man who took the time to make this because he wants to turn you on to more good music.

And we wouldn't have seen this without a quick scan of the comments on the Hear This column, where a link to this video was posted by both Quirinus and D_Boons_Ghost, two people we'll likely never meet.

Let's crowd-source world peace, man.

tl;dr

The Typing Monkey may re-use that headline (and tag) anytime we post links to articles on the web that actually qualify as articles.

What qualifies us to decide what qualifies as an "article"? Any piece we read that reaches a certain tipping point of the tl;dr factor. To save you a trip to Urban Dictionary, that weird abbreviation stands for "too long; didn't read" and is often used jokingly in comments under articles on the Web.

But it's just as often typed in earnest, because attention for reading web articles drops exponentially after certain word counts. The numbers vary depending on which study you read, but the advice is the same: the shorter the better. Which loosely means, anything that can't be read "above the fold" -- read without the user having to scroll further down the page -- is least likely to be read.

Why does this happen? Again, search around the Web and read up on studies, statistics and opinions, but the fact that it happens bugs us. It bugs us even more when we catch ourselves doing it. Never mind that this very blog posts two- and three-page scrollers all the time. We just can't shut up and that's another issue entirely.

So in defense of long-form journalism, criticism and other types of information delivery through the written word, we'll put "tl;dr" right there in the headline to let you know that what we're linking to, when we're recommending it, is more than one "page down" button's worth of reading but worth the time and attention.

To the links!

First up is "Wikipedia's Women Problem" from science writer James Gleick for The New York Review of Books. If you've been following the story at all, Wikipedia has slowly moved all of the women from the category "American novelists" into a sub-category specific to their gender. While this sort of OCD categorizing isn't weird on it's own, it's a problem because they didn't call the other category "male American novelists." Gleick goes deep. Hold on.

Take a break, drink some juice and then dig into Christopher Riley's love letter to Richard Feynman from The Telegraph. Riley's piece is secretly hyping the film version of his love letter to Feynman, but that doesn't reduce the appeal of his writing.

And perhaps most interesting to all of us at TMI, is a Wilson Quarterly article by Tom Vanderbilt called "Star Wars." Vanderbilt examines the value of "user review" critical opinions that dominate and influence our behavior on the Web and in the real world of commerce.

Yelp, Amazon and other giants of this format really do shape opinions, but Vanderbilt asks whether there's any real worth in these arbitrary and generally anonymous voices. Plus he asks what we bring to these opinions in contrast to what we might bring to the critical writing of that dying species: the paid, published critic.

For us, Vanderbilt's article is the most interesting, but all are worth a dive.

You'll be seeing mention of Arts & Letters Daily frequently for the tl;dr items, because that's where we go most often to grow our brains. Thank you A&L.

Journey Round His Skull

Will Schofield's astounding art blog 50 Watts will eat up all your spare time. You have been warned.

[Selection from the gallery "Children's Books in Poland: The 1960s." The '70s collection is every bit as good.]

Message in a Gravestone

An Oregon woman bought some fake gravestones at K-Mart in 2011. The Halloween decorations were put into storage unopened.

A year later, she opened them to put them up for the October holiday and found something far scarier than the cold embrace of the grave: a note allegedly written by a Chinese laborer at the factory where the disposable-income item was manufactured. It's a plea for help, detailing the harsh working conditions in which the item was made.

The note sets of The Typing Monkey's baloney detector, though it's entirely possible that it's legitimate. We don't deny that many things we buy -- including the computer used to write and post this information -- are crafted and assembled in conditions our well-fed and generally secure selves would find deplorable and unimaginably cruel.

Yet the note seems a little too good to be true in terms of human rights-riling. Why is this making news two months after the note was discovered? The timing seems off, given that many Westerners have recently spent millions (billions) buying things we don't need to celebrate Christmas.

Read it and draw your own conclusions.

SPIN Likely to Save Trees Soon

We've come to like SPIN magazine during the past few years. It's one of the few publications Typing Monkey Industries maintains a regular subscription to.

The days of leaving it folded open to a good article are probably numbered now with the news today that Buzzmedia bought SPIN.

Read SPIN's announcement and a New York Times piece about the transaction.

Print media's extinction has already been analyzed and editorialized enough. But when the grid goes down, we'll have some back issues to read and remember what life was like before the collapse. And then we'll tear those old SPIN pages into strips so that we can keep the fire burning as we huddle for warmth and pray for sweet, forgiving death.


A solemn nod to The AV Club.

Many Kinds of Close Encounters, Apparently

The sordid tale of former U.S. Senator and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards' affair with a videographer named Rielle Hunter has provided miles of column inches for newspapers, magazines, tabloids and Websites since the story broke.

Old and often repeated, the story of infidelity and apparent cracks in the moral character of a public official (gasp, faint, etc.) is far less interesting than a detail of the scandal brought to light via the court testimony.

That detail being that Rielle Hunter, the videographer with whom Edwards fathered a child out of wedlock, wanted to claim she had been abducted by aliens. This was part of an effort to deny that Hunter and Edwards had been romantically involved.

The Typing Monkey wants to make it clear to any politicians, celebrities, spin doctors, historical revisionists and public relations flacks that we think this is a marvelous idea.

Have a starlet who needs to lay low in rehab for a few weeks? Tell us she is taking time off to document sightings of the chupacabra.

Grassy knoll and second shooter theories are no more provable or easy to deny than, say, a coven of Satanists eager to assassinate the first Catholic president. See? You really can't handle the truth. [You're mixing up your Oliver Stone films. -- ed.]

We'd like to posit that William H. Seward got such a deal on Alaska when he purchased it from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million because Russia agreed to evacuate all of the Yetis residing there, hoping to bring them all back to Siberia so they could create an army of abominable snowmen. The U.S. got a gold rush untroubled by Yetis, Russia gained an army of cryptids.

The Loch Ness Monster attacked and sank Nazi U-Boats during the war? Why not?

Take any historical controversy or even minor event and make it more exciting by adding paranormal explanations and interference. Our tabloid political climate could use some actual tabloid fodder instead of this banal baby-mama drama.

Many believe the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage, taken in 1967, is definitive proof of the existence of Sasquatch. What they fail to realize is that Bigfoot is, in fact, a courier on his way to pick up The Pentagon Papers from then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

What He Said

AV Club writer Keith Phipps' latest entry for his "Secret Cinema" column details the joys and faults of Goeorge A. Romero's film Season of the Witch. In case you're not an employee at The Typing Monkey, you may not know that we've waxed rhapsodic about this film before.

And much like Joe Bob Briggs' wonderful examination of why The Creature from the Black Lagoon is so good, Phipps' essay on Witch sums up our feelings about the movie almost exactly.

Give it a read and allow us to sit back and smugly stroke our chins. Then see it if you haven't.

Another Use for Books

"Brian Dettmer is known for his detailed and innovative sculptures with books and other forms of antiquated media."

That's directly from the artist's bio on his Website. The work is amazing and Dettmer's skill, vision and creativity astounds. Still, it hurts us just a little when books are referred to as antiquated media. Don't worry books, The Typing Monkey still loves you.

[A salute to Andrew Monko for sending us this link, which led too Mr. Dettmer's site.]

Mr. Roberts Has Something to Say

Journalist Kevan Roberts has a new job writing about music, and we presume, other things for The Huffington Post.

Because The Typing Monkey was fortunate enough to have worked alongside Mr. Roberts for several years, we are super-pumped to have the opportunity to read his work again. We reserve the right to wonder how often he swore while composing his innaugural Huffington Post column, a fond recollection of grunge.

More please.

Tyler the Creator

... or Who Says There's No Room for Junk-Food Movies in Black Cinema?

By Kris Kendall, special contributor to The Typing Monkey

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m a 41-year-old white male, born and raised in a pale corner of the United States. I’ve never seen a Tyler Perry movie. I also stopped watching Spike Lee’s movies when, about halfway through Summer of Sam, I got bored and frustrated with the dull pace and stopped the DVD. Yes, I’m probably missing out on some worthwhile Spike Lee joints, but there’s plenty of time to get to 25th Hour, Bamboozled and Clockers.

I was in high school when She’s Gotta Have It came out and though I skipped School Daze, I watched Do the Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues with enthusiasm. The former was tense and thought-provoking, the latter was too long by at least 15 minutes, with a coda that indicated Mr. Lee was suffering from a filmmaker problem I call “writer/director syndrome.” I know I saw Jungle Fever but it didn’t stick with me.

I have seen a few minutes of both Meet the Browns and House of Payne, the TBS sitcoms Tyler Perry produces. Neither show says anything to me about my life. Even though the broad comedy triggered a few chuckles, there was little there to keep me engaged.

Likewise, I’ve seen a few minutes of one of Perry’s Medea films and it fared worse for my attention span.

So what qualifies me to pontificate on Tyler Perry’s “worthiness” as a filmmaker? Nothing. In fact, you’re free to go read something else if you like. But on April 21, 2011 the NPR news program All Things Considered aired a short piece in which co-host Michelle Norris mediated a debate about Perry’s output and influence, between journalist Goldie Taylor and cultural critic Toure.

The topic was inspired by Spike Lee’s continued criticism of Tyler Perry’s films, prompting Perry to break his silence and finally respond. Lee and many other people – mostly black, but critics of various ethnicities have weighed in – think black film audiences deserve better.

And more to the point: The presumption that white viewers may see Perry’s alleged stereotypes of black characters and think this is representative of all black people. Why would I think that?

I’m not here to talk about Perry’s films because I haven’t seen any of them. I’m not even prepared to discuss Spike Lee’s films since I checked out on his output a good 15 years ago. And no, I won’t speak about the pros and cons of Perry’s hugely successful production company as it relates to representations of black culture in mass media. Not because I don’t have an opinion, but because others have done it and will continue to do it better than I can.

But in listening to Taylor and Toure’s point-counterpoint, especially the descriptions of the archetypally “black” characters (caricatures?) that appear in Perry’s movies, and his even more controversial musings on black women, I kept thinking: They’re describing the same kind of wide-appeal drivel that white filmmakers make about white people.

The Meet the Parents franchise, starring a you-can-do-better Ben Stiller is generally ignored or hated by plenty of people, but the first film made enough money to inspire two sequels. Somebody was watching it, and it wasn't me.

Likewise offensive fluff such as Wild Hogs will top the box office during opening weekend despite reviews that are less than favorable. That movie reflects nothing about my life experience either. I'm not part of its intended demographic any more than I am for Madea's Big Happy Family.

I could ramble on for twice my current word count regarding romantic comedies. Katherine Heigl, Kate Hudson, Jennifer Aniston and various other stars knock out dull romantic fantasies every year, sometimes two or three a year per star. Critics do ask if the rom-com lead is how (white) women want to be portrayed. Yet these rote relationship fairytales, while inspiring their share of vitriol, don’t engender the same kind of wide cultural debate.

Spike Lee, I get it. However, I don’t think Perry is perpetuating stereotypes any more than similar fare aimed at white audiences.

The problem seems to be more along these lines: I can count the number of mainstream black directors on one hand. It’s a small clubhouse and Perry’s detractors want every film to count.

That’s understandable, but it's also joining two very different debates and the dearth of black directors won't be alleviated by Spike Lee targeting Tyler Perry. If Perry's guilty of anything, it's of being successful using a formula older than Hollywood. [And of being a union buster? -- ed.]

There should be room for escapist fare that paints a simplistic or idealized version of life. Cinema doesn’t have to be provocative or contemplative. There’s enough room for Buster Keaton and The Three Stooges, room enough for Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Get on the Bus.

It’s okay to enjoy both the opera and Looney Tunes. It's also okay to like one and not the other, but neither side is allowed to dismiss the other simply because they think it is below (or above) them. There's enough audience to go around.

Spike Lee seems to want Perry to make meaningful films, whatever those might be. Perry put his money behind the Oscar-winning Precious, and in 2010 adapted and directed from a play the debate-stirring For Colored Girls. Both of these films arguably say more to black women -- a vastly underserved movie audience -- than any of Lee's movies. What exactly does Lee want from Perry?

To cannibalize a more eloquently asserted, parallel idea from Tina Fey: Lee might think Perry's success comes at the expense of other black filmmakers. If he does think along those lines, that misconception is a bigger problem than the quality of Perry's movies.



Kris Kendall has never seen a Michael Bay movie either but he's pretty sure Transformers is terrible. His writing has appeared on various public restroom walls and in letters to his mom.

Steadman?

"Though Oprah herself will not remain vegan, her long time partner, Stedman Graham, has expressed interest in sticking with it."

That's an exerpt from an article about Oprah and the staff of her show attempting to follow a vegan diet for a week. We could grouse about the lazy substitution of the word "vegan" when writers actually mean a "vegan diet" (the latter is a way of eating, the former is a way of living) but instead we'll just enjoy the fact that the world's most powerful woman gave it a shot.
 
Even more interesting is that her husband, the Ringo Starr of non-famous spouses of famous people, may take it further.

The Roar of the Greasepaint

Daniel Cronin's ICP Parking Lot photos have already circumnavigated the Web world a few times. Don't feel bad if they passed you by, but do take a look. Cronin simply documented, and the result is pure journalism -- information that the audience is trusted to process however it will.

Many audience members will respond with laughter. And that's okay. The Juggalos probably derive as much nourishment from mockery as they do from their omnipresent bottles of Faygo.

Cronin's text introducing ICP Parking Lot gets at something about Juggalo culture that's generally overlooked: "They have built an entire lifestyle and genre of music with little to no main-stream backing over the last 15+ years."

It's a detail mentioned early on in this 17-minute long infomercial advertising The 2010 Gathering -- a four-day long multi-media festival and the only sponsor is Insane Clown Posse's own media company, Psychopathic. Chew on that for a minute. Four days of music, film, and other entertainments all done without outside corporate sponsorship.

Does Burning Man have corporate backing? Did Dischord ever put together anything this big? Counter-culture, punk, DIY ... whatever. Be impressed or be afraid, but do pay attention.

Paper Zombies

Our friends at Utne Reader have started a club. The Dead Magazine Club.

It's a Tumblr blog with a wiki-ethic. The goal? To help Utne Reader "gather the hidden histories of the independent press! Or just browse some amazing covers."

The Typing Monkey thinks that's a fine idea. You know what to do.

The Monkey Reads: Ditko's Outer Limits

Strange Suspense
The Steve Ditko Archives, Vol. 1
Introduced and edited by Blake Bell
(Fantagraphics)
Few artistic creations merit the adjective "lurid." Strange Suspense leers confidently from the shadows of that small crowd.

Before Ditko gave life to Spider-Man and took Jack Kirby's deliberate comic book art into even weirder, angular places in the 1960s, he slargged away in the mid-'50s as a artist and scripter for Charlton publishing's horror comics. This collection assembles that work in all of its cheap-inked beauty.

Charlton was the off-brand to EC's superior product, but as this book shows, Ditko's editors at Charlton seemed to let their creative staff do whatever they wanted. So the reader doesn't get only the expected Creepshow style horror tales with twist endings.

Sure there's plenty of the straightforward stuff. But Ditko mixes genres too. An extra-terrestrial soldier cheats at poker with a bunch of circus performers. Crooked cops of the Jim Thompson variety get tangled up with femme fatales in the distant, space-traveling future.

Best of all, Ditko fans get more of the artist's bizarre depictions of human physiology. He twists faces into freakshow territory that clearly influenced Charles Burns. Ditko's psychedelic backgrounds turn mundane libraries and dark roads into funhouse distortions that key in directly to the ugly psyche of adolescent boys. Plus there's enough flop sweat to fill an Olympic-size pool.

The stories themselves don't lift beyond rejected Night Gallery ideas, but the accompanying images splash cubism and surrealism onto the unsuspecting page.

Reference material: If the infected, deformed teens of Black Hole inspired the reader to linger on each page of that magnificent book, Strange Suspense is worth a look. And for the Ditko-curious, this isn't a bad place to start.

Visibly Frenzied

It must be noted that Dr. Fred Beldinstein now operates out of an Arbor called Ann. He's painstakingly restored and reassembled his lab there and has resumed posting to his video blog Frenzy of the Visible. There he lets all his personal demons run free in the form of YouTube, Hulu and other online video files.

Need to see the preview of the Mexican vampire movie The Genie of Darkness? Crave some vintage concert footage of Venom? Done and done. At FotV Dr. Beldinstein posts educational films, forgotten cartoons, punk videos, schlock horror films and clips that defy easy classification.

He finds them so that you don't have to waste time looking for entertainment you didn't know you needed. We suggest you click on over there post haste.

The Monkey Recycles: Part II

If you haven't read part one, scroll down to the "Part I" entry or click here.

Information Supernatural Highway
Soon after Teajay put Ghost in a Jar up for auction on eBay, unusually high bids were submitted and quickly withdrawn by new and experienced eBay users alike. By the time the sale ended more than 80 bids had been retracted or canceled. One bid was retracted because Teajay's approval rating as an eBay seller was too high. Retracting a bid because the seller's feedback summary is too good is akin to refusing food because it looks too fresh.

Two days after bidding commenced Teajay began posting almost daily to assure the audience that Ghost in a Jar was not a hoax. He also clarified that the other items referencing Ghost in a Jar were in no way related to his sale.

Ghost in a Jar had attracted so much attention that many seized the opportunity to capitalize on the phenomenon and make a profit -- like t-shirt sales at an execution. Dozens of items that parodied, mocked, paid homage to or simply stood on the shoulders of Ghost in a Jar were put up for sale.

Highlights of this generally humorous batch included:
~ A collar and leash for training your Ghost in a Jar
~ Movie rights to the story
~ Legal representation for Ghost in a Jar
~ A Fonzie tote bag to carry the jar

One listing offered a homeless ghost looking for a jar. The picture featured a white tissue decorated with a sad face, wrapped around what was probably a lollipop.

"Jar in a Ghost" (not Ghost in a Jar, the seller promised) boasted its own origin story and pictures of the titular phantom: a translucent figure named Herbert, who bore a striking resemblance to Thomas Edison. Floating in Herbert's shimmering white torso was a jar that appeared to contain okra or possibly pickles.

News of the Ghost in a Jar sale travelled fast around the Web via blogs, e-mail and a few news Websites. [Remember this was 2003, when RSS feeds were new and social networking had barely passed from Friendster to MySpace, not to mention that cell phones and other mobile devices in the U.S. were not nearly as sophisticated as they are today. -- ed.] And then it all came crashing down at the end of the auction cycle.

Less than 30 minutes before bidding closed on June 5, a buyer going by the handle "gary_the_gimp_horn" bid $50,922.00 (USD). He retracted this bid with less than five minutes remaining before eBay could legally force "gary" to pay in full.

The sale of Ghost in a Jar was nullified by eBay management and nearly every Ghost in a Jar-inspired item was likewise removed from the virtual shelf. Some who followed the bid history for Ghost in a Jar say the price reached as high as $999 million.

Ghostbusted
One disappointed participant and eager observer goes by the eBay user name Midnightdread. His Ghost in a Jar-motivated auction item was Gary_the_gimp_horn's Ghost in a Ghost Jar. To clarify, Midnight dread was selling the ghost of the final Ghost in a Jar bidder, in a ghost jar. The starting bid was $6.66.

Midnightdread described what the highest bidder would receive: "A ghost in a ghost jar, shipped flat with heavy cardboard protection, just like my instructions said … I might have included the Casper poster too."

The Casper poster to which he refers is a Haight-Ashbury psychedelic-style advertisement for a wrap party held for Industrial Light & Magic employees to celebrate the completion of the special effects for the 1995 film adaptation of Casper the Friendly Ghost -- a collector's item of unknown value.

But Midnightdread had the sell the poster on its own. Site managers at eBay canceled his Ghost in a Ghost Jar listing along with a swath of others. EBay informed him via e-mail that his auction did "not appear to be consistent with eBay guidelines."

Midnightdread sent a reply to formally protest the cancellation. His four-paragraph missive addressed issues of free speech and artistic expression. He pointed out than an item as potentially dubious as the original Ghost in a Jar went unnoticed despite the high number of inflated and retracted bids. He further argued that eBay was squashing an entertaining and ultimately harmless moment in Web history.

"They had a spontaneous, genuine happening going on," said Midnightdread. "Like true party poopers [eBay] killed almost all of it. Their response was an overreaction magnified by ten."

That eBay turned on the lights and told everyone to go home is no surprise. In the modified free market the auction site provides, there was nothing in place to stop joe_stoner_dork from placing a bid on Ghost in a Jar, with no intention of paying it, and accidentally winning. Teajay, the thoughtless bidder, and eBay would then be left to fight it out, possibly in court. No jar, regardless of the contents, is worth that kind of trouble to eBay.

Teajay was not interested in responding to questions posed for this article. An inquiry e-mail to eBay's "more info" address netted no reply either. Numerous questions are left unaddressed.

What would Teajay have considered a reasonable price for Ghost in a Jar? Since the incident, does eBay monitor transactions on the site more closely? If a legitimate buyer had paid in full, what would become of Ghost in a Jar? Would the Black Thing follow the jar to its new home and become a potentially dangerous pest for its new possessor? That is, can a curse be transferred from one person to another simply by selling the cursed item? Or would The Black Thing remain with Teajay, focusing its anger on the one who disturbed its burial site?

Update: For about a year after the Ghost in a Jar/eBay fiasco, Teajay was a minor celebrity on the Web and was even interviewed by a couple talk-radio programs dedicated to paranormal topics. He maintained a blog for a few months in an attempt to prove the legitimacy of Ghost in a Jar. Helpful commentors suggested that The Black Thing, and the method of containment, indicated that Teajay had incurred the wrath of an ill-tempered Djinn, a supernatural creature particular to Islamic mythology. The Website Ghostinajar.com has archived all of the pictures Teajay originally posted on eBay.

Back to Part I